CHAPTER XXI – FROM ACROSS THE SEA
In the second year after Renée’s return two signal events happened. A new little boy was born. She had coveted a girl for Papa Gaspard to love as he had loved her, but one had to be content with what God sent, and the boy was bright and strong.
“No,” Papa Gaspard said when they were talking it over one day, “there will be plenty of time for girls. I am not sorry. But I shall ask a gift of you and André, now that little Gaspard’s place is filled. Give him to me. Let him take my name. It would be a grief to me to have it die out. Let there be a new Gaspard Denys growing up into a brave boy, a good, upright man, we hope. You have your fortune and André will make another. There will be enough to keep a dozen children from starving,” with a bright, amused laugh. “I will make a new will and give the boy what I have left. The lead interest is increasing and will be a fortune by itself. So if you and André consent. It is not as if I wanted to take him away; it is simply that he shall be Gaspard Denys. In the old time they put a St. to it, but that was in France. We are going to be a new people.”
“Oh, Uncle Gaspard!” and she hid her face on his breast, while her arms went around his neck. “The best out of my life is hardly good enough for you. I give you my boy with my whole heart.”
André Valbonais said the same thing. So the Governor and the priest settled all the legal points, and this, with the certificate of his birth and baptism and the will of his godfather, Gaspard Denys, were locked up in a strong box for any time that they might be needed.
A bright, sturdy little fellow was Gaspard, extravagantly fond of his grandfather and his constant companion. He had his mother’s soft brown eyes and her curly hair.
One afternoon when the sun had lain warm and golden all about, Renée Valbonais sat sewing on the wide porch that had been pushed out large enough for a room. Overhead and at the sides it was a cluster of vines and blossoming things that shook out fragrance with every waft of wind. The baby was tumbling about and chattering in both French and Spanish, for he picked up words easily. Sheba, the nurse, and Chloe were just outside in the garden. Mère Lunde was napping in her easy-chair. It was a pretty picture of comfort.
Renée merely glanced up as a young man entered the gate and looked about him with a touch of uncertainty. Some message from her husband, doubtless. It was so tranquil they might go out in the canoe. He came up slowly and then paused, glanced hesitatingly at her, taking off his cap and bowing. His attire was well worn, but different from the common habiliments. His figure and air was that of the cities – she had seen such young men in New Orleans.
“Is it – Madame Valbonais?” he asked.
The voice was cultured and with a peculiar richness. The hand that held the cap was slim and white as a girl’s. His complexion was clear, with the faintest suggestion of olive, but rather pale, though the warmth had given a tint of color to the cheeks.
“I am Madame Valbonais,” gently inclining her head with a charming graciousness.
“And a De Longueville by birth?”
The accent was such a pure musical French that this time she smiled as she nodded.
“You do not know – at least you may not remember, but a long while ago, it seems, you came to Paris and were being sent to the New World, America. You were at the Hôtel de Longueville, and there were two little boys – ”
“Oh!” she exclaimed, her eyes dilating as a sudden suspicion – knowledge, indeed – seemed to electrify her. “Oh, you are – ” and her voice failed.
“I am one of the little boys, the eldest, Robert de Longueville. And my father was your father also. Mine is a sad story, madame, though it began fair enough. I have come to the New World, where I have not a friend. All I knew was that you had a grandfather in St. Louis and were sent thither. You must pardon me, madame – ”
His voice broke a little and his eyes were downcast.
The good and tender God had sent some one to her in her hour of need. She, too, had come a stranger to this new land. But she was not old enough to realize all the desolation.
Renée rose with gracious courtesy and put out her hand, moved by her own remembrances as well as his loneliness. He took it and glanced up. She saw his eyes were brimming with tears. His face and manner appealed to the tenderest side of her nature, and her affection went out at once.
“There are no words to thank you for this kindliness, madame. I am such a stranger to you, although the same blood runs in our veins. And I speak the truth. Ah, you cannot know – ”
“Come and be seated. You look weary. Chloe,” she called, “bring a glass of wine and some cake.”
Then she pushed a chair up to the small table and put her work in the pretty Indian basket. His eyes followed the graceful form and took in the serene, lovely face. Something stirred within him that he had never known before. He had a French admiration and regard for his mother, but he could have knelt and kissed the hands of his sister.
Renée noticed now that his shoes were worn to the ground. He must have walked far.
“You came from New Orleans?” she ventured.
“Yes. The vessel brought me there. Then a boat was coming up to Fort Chartres. From there I have walked mostly. I am a poor emigré, madame. I will not invade your home under false colors. I spent my last sou to be rowed across the river. But in these troublous times you must have heard many sad stories.”
“We are largely out of the way. Yes, there have been sad enough times in France. And your brother – ”
“He decided to stay in the monastery, though heaven only knows how long that will stand. All is terror and wildness, and no one’s life is safe. My father was – executed – ”
“Oh, how terrible!” The tears overflowed her eyes.
The cake and wine came, and, after many thanks, he sipped the wine, but the cakes he ate like a hungry man. When she would have sent for more a gesture of his hand retained her.
“I thank you heartily,” he said, with a grave inclination of the head. “I am such a stranger that I ought to prove my identity. I have papers – ”
“You may show them to my husband. I believe you. Why, I am your half sister, but with a whole heart, rest assured. Robert de Longueville. Yes, I remember you both. You were very shy, and I think I was very much afraid,” smiling as she recalled the old impressions that seemed like a dream.
“We used to talk of you. We never had any sister of our own. We were sent to school, and once a year came back to Paris. Papa was at court. I was a page for awhile, then I went to a military school. Honoré preferred books and a religious life. He was very sweet and gentle, while I liked life and stir and adventures. I do not think mamma quite approved Honoré, but she was proud that I was to be a soldier. And then the dreadful times began with the mob which first deprived the King of authority, and then cast him into prison with hundreds of others. Oh, it was indeed a reign of terror!”
“And your father?” in a low tone.
“They were both cast into prison,” and his voice fell a little. “My mother died there. It would have been better if my father had died with her. The Commune hated every vestige of royalty, abolished titles, confiscated estates. And then poor papa was one of its victims. Our school was broken up and we were driven into Paris. I don’t know what our fate would have been, impressed in the army of the rabble; but I would not have fought for the men who had murdered my father. I would have died first.”
Renée wiped the tears from her eyes. Until now it seemed as if she had never cared for her father. Surely he had expiated all mistakes and sins by his death.
“Then I ran away. I found my way to the monastery and Honoré and told them the sad tale. They were very kind and would have kept me, but there was no knowing how long they would be allowed their refuge. I resolved to escape to England, as every week or two refugees were flying thither. I found my opportunity. And there I heard many things about these new United Colonies. The English are not over-cordial to them, but the thought of a people who had fought seven years for liberty and conquered in the face of such odds fired my heart. I resolved to come to America. We had never forgotten you, madame, and Honoré wrote that if I found you I was to give you his love. He is a sweet, gentle fellow and will make an excellent priest, if there is any France left,” he added mournfully, drawing a long, pained breath.
She was glad they had remembered her and talked of her. She raised her sweet, sympathetic eyes.
“Then I came to New Orleans, as I learned from there I could reach St. Louis. It is queer, but all of you on this side of the river are under Spanish domination, and it is well for you, perhaps, even if you are French.”
“I know so little about it,” she replied gravely, “only that we are proud of being French. But the poor King and Queen, and – papa!”
“Honoré and I were thankful mamma died in prison, though we do not know what she suffered. And that is the whole of the sad story, madame. I am young and can work for my bread, surely, and it will not be so lonely since I have found you.”
Her tender heart went out to him. “Monsieur Robert,” she said, “I hope we shall be good friends. I am glad you came to me – ”
“But I do not mean to be a burden on you,” he subjoined quickly. “I still think I should like to be a soldier, yet I have a fair education and I can make my living at something.”
In the light of the luxury of Paris all through his childhood, so differently aspected from this, he gathered that his sister was far from rich; but even if she had been, he had not meant to ask help from her. There was a good deal of pride in the De Longueville blood. He had not come as a suppliant for anything but love. She liked him none the worse for it. Then glancing up, she saw Uncle Gaspard and her child in the street.
“Excuse my absence a few moments and go on with your rest, for you look weary enough. Chloe, bring some more wine and cake.”
Then she glided down the path and met them at the gateway. Her face was flushed, her eyes deep and full of emotion.
“Come here in the little arbor,” she cried. “A strange thing has happened to me. I feel as if I had been reading it in a book, but it is all true. I hardly know where to begin. And, Uncle Gaspard, you must be kind and merciful, and forgive my father for his neglect. He is dead. He was one of the victims of that awful revolution because he was faithful to his King.”
“Renée, child, do not give way to such excitement. The grave covers all. We do not carry our grudges beyond it. And if he had loved you, you would never have come to me and I should have lost much, much!” And, picking up little Gaspard, he kissed him fondly and lifted him to his shoulder.
“Yes, I knew you would forgive, you are so generous. And” – she caught his free hand – “my brother, who has fled from those horrible scenes, who has lost both parents, has emigrated and is here – found me after some searching. Life has gone hardly with him.”
“Count de Longueville’s son!” The lines of Gaspard Denys’s face hardened, his eyes grew stern.
“Think of him as my brother only,” she pleaded. “We are to be kindly disposed to our enemies even. And, as you say, if he had been a fond father to me you would never have had me or little Gaspard. I think Robert will soon go away again. He has been partly bred for a soldier. And we ought not visit on him any sin of his father. That is left for God.”
“True.” It was gravely said, but not cordially. “Let us see what the young man is like. Renée, he never shall be any trouble to you.”
“Oh, you will feel so sorry for him presently.”
They walked to the porch – gallery, as every one called it. The young fellow had finished his food and wine again. He had eaten nothing since morning. He looked a little rested, but his eyes had a questioning glance.
He was not quite what Gaspard had looked for in a De Longueville. Barely medium size, though he was not yet twenty, refined and with a quiet dignity, he rather disarmed the critical eyes, and Gaspard experienced a touch of sympathy for him. Renée made him tell his pathetic story over again, which he did modestly enough. And when he would have gone, though whither he knew not, Denys bade him stay. There were no inns in the town.
He won André as well before the evening was over. And when they found he had no plans, only a vague desire to offer his services to the new government that in other days had aroused such an interest in France, they bade him remain with them. He had both seen and heard the Marquis de Lafayette after his return to France, when he had been full of enthusiasm for the new people.
“But, Monsieur Robert, you are French,” said André. “And in the turns of fate we may some day have a French country here. Anyhow, a man may earn his bread; and from what I hear, the colonies are not overstocked with prosperity. Better wait awhile and cast in your lot with us.”
Robert de Longueville was very glad to. He thought of the Reign of Terror with a shudder, and often wondered about Honoré, hearing at last that he was safe in an outlying district of northern France.
CHAPTER XXII – A NEW ST. LOUIS
Once again the French flag waved over St. Louis and hearts beat high with joy. Not that they had been unhappy or discontented under the Spanish régime, though the place had remained stationery. Except for the fur trade and the energies of the house of Maxent Laclede & Co. with their entrepot, it would still have been a little French hamlet. Even now it had scarcely two hundred buildings and less than a thousand inhabitants. Yet perhaps few places could boast of forty years of content and happiness and such peaceful living.
So down came the Spanish flag and up went the lilies of France. There was a night of rejoicing. People scarcely went to bed. Fiddles and flutes played old French airs, and songs were sung; but, after all, the people were decorous and there was no orgie. Most of these men had never known Parisian enthusiasm. Robert de Longueville marvelled at it and the simplicity.
It was well, perhaps, to have had those few hours of jubilation for men to talk about in their old age. For the next day a company came over from the fort and held a consultation with Lieutenant-Governor Dellassus. And then the royal lilies came down slowly, sadly, it seemed, and men’s hearts beat with sudden apprehension. What did it mean? They gathered in little knots and their faces were blanched.
Captain Stoddard raised the new colors – broad bands of red and white and thirteen stars on a blue field. The brave colonies had taken another leap and crossed the Mississippi. Here at the old Spanish quarters, March, 1804, the last vestige of hope fluttered and died in the French heart. The breeze caught the flag and flung it out and a few cheers went up, but they were from the Americans, and the salutes even had a melancholy sound.
“St. Louis,” said some one. “Will they take away the name, too? Are we to be orphans?”
Others wept. Some of the better informed tried to explain, but it was half-heartedly. No one was certain of what was to come. These conquerors, yes, they were that, spoke a different tongue, had a different religion, were aggressive, a resistless power that might sweep them beyond the mountains.
There was no rejoicing that night. There were no cabarets in which men could drink and discuss the change. They went to each other’s houses and sat moodily by firesides. Old St. Louis was lost to them and hearts were very heavy.
Spain had ceded the whole of Louisiana to France, and again France had sold her desirable possession. Napoleon, hating the English and wanting the money to carry on his war against them, had bargained with the United States. All the great country lying westward no one knew how far. And the mighty river was free from troublesome complications.
Yes, old St. Louis was gone. There was something new in the very air, an energy where there had been a leisurely aspect; a certain roughness instead of simplicity, pioneer life. No avalanche swept over them, but people came from the other side of the river, stalwart boatmen, stalwart hunters, with new and far-reaching ideas. Schools, poor enough at first, but teaching something besides the catechism and a little arithmetic. There were books to read, discoveries to make, mines to unearth, more profitable ways of labor. The old slow method of work in the salt licks was improved upon, as well as that of the lead mines. Upper Louisiana held in its borders some of the great wealth of the world. Spanish language dropped out, French began to be a good deal mixed, and men found it to their advantage to learn English. The stockade and the round towers dropped down, and no one repaired them, because the town was going to stretch out. New houses were built, but many of them seemed as queer at a later date, with their second-floor galleries approached by a stairs from the outside. The high-peaked roofs with their perky windows looked down on the old one-story houses of split logs and plaster. Laclede’s town, about a mile long, was old enough to have legends growing about it when men sat out on stoops and smoked their pipes.
Yet there was enough of the past left to still afford content and romance. Robert de Longueville proved himself a capable young fellow and turned his past education to some account. He had a truly French adoration for his half sister that presently won quite a regard from Gaspard Denys.
Robert was fascinated as well with the half Indian wife of M. Marchand, and never tired of the wild legends of fur hunting and life up at the strait. Then the ten children were a great source of interest as well. There were only two girls among them, the boys growing up tall, strong and fine-looking, proud of their mother, who kept curiously young and occasionally put on all her Indian finery for their amusement.
Renée was quite fair and rather petite, and with such shining eyes they often called her Firefly. Then Robert fell in love with her, and there was another Renée de Longueville to hand down the name, and very proud felt Renée Valbonais of the fact.
The little old church was partly rebuilt in the repairing, and was turned about. Then many years afterward it became the French Cathedral on Walnut Street. The high, stiff pews savor of olden time. There are still several paintings in it, one very fine, sent by Louis, the King of France. And there are the inscriptions in four languages, two modern and two ancient.
When Renée Valbonais knelt in her pew at the consecration her face was still sweet, her eyes brown, soft and smiling, but the hair curling about her forehead was snowy white. On this spot she had prayed for Uncle Gaspard’s safe return, then she had prayed to be made willing to give him up if it was for his happiness. Now she had very little to pray for, so many blessings had been showered upon her by the good God. So her heart was all one great thanksgiving, and she felt that at the last she could “depart in peace.”
When it was set off from Louisiana, when it became a Territory and then a State, St. Louis remained the capital. Brick and finished frame houses were built, stores and factories, a newspaper started, a steamboat came up the river, and that revolutionized the trade.
Then it was to change curiously again. The Americans had nearly superseded the French. Some of them went to the towns below, intermarriages became common as the prejudices died away. Then there was a great German emigration. The failure of patriotic hopes at home in the Old World sent many across to the New World. They were of the better class, educated, energetic and earnest for freedom of thought. Again in 1849 they were largely recruited after another unsuccessful revolution.
Eighty-three years after the founding of the town they held a grand celebration. Only one member of Pierre Laclede Liquist’s company, who had planted and named the town, was living. This was the president of the day, Pierre Chouteau. The fine old madame, who had gloried in her brave sons, had passed to the other country. Four mounted Indians in full costume were the bodyguard of the venerable president, and in the carriages were a few withered-up, brown-faced Frenchmen, who had made themselves log houses along those early years and lived their simple lives, raised their families, danced in the merry-makings and now felt almost like aliens.
Gaspard Denys, still hale and hearty, was among them, past eighty, but clear of eye and steady of step. He had seen his godson, young Gaspard, grow up into a fine, manly fellow, marry a sweet girl and have sons to carry on the name. What more could a man ask than a well-used life and a certain share of happiness? But they had gone back on the next rise of ground, for business had seized with its inexorable grasp on the old home where Renée had sat and dreamed beside the great chimney and Mère Lunde had nodded.
Way out to the side of the old pond they had gone, where there was still a forest on one side of them. Great hickories, pecans, trees useful for food and fuel and building houses, long reaches of tangled grapes that made all the air sweet at their blossoming and again at their ripening, fields and meadows, the garden near by, the house with great porches, a wide hall and beautiful stairway, with no need of outside climbing.
“Here we will end our days,” Gaspard Denys said to the child of the woman he still dreamed about, more vividly, perhaps, now than at middle life. For there was the wide stone chimney, the great corners in the fireplace. Sometimes on a winter night they stood a pine torch in the corner, and it gave the weird, flickering light they used to love.
Across the hall would be young people dancing. But there was no more Guinolee, no more anxious, eager crowds to see who would get the beans in the cake, no strife to be queens, no anxiety to be chosen kings; that, with other old things, had passed away.
“I wonder,” Renée says, smiling absently, “if they have as good times as they used to in old St. Louis? There are so many pleasures now.”
No one goes round on New Year’s Eve singing songs, saying, “Good-night, master; good-night, mistress. I wish you great joy and good luck.”
And this was to be all swept away by the imperious demand of the growing city; but it was true then that Renée and André Valbonais and Gaspard Denys had gone to that country which is never to know any change, for God is in the midst of it.
Before the century was half gone the dream of the old explorers had come true, and many a new explorer gave up his life, as well as De Soto and La Salle. For out on the western coasts, over mountain fastnesses, through gorges and beyond the Mississippi thousands of miles lay the land of gold; lay, too, a new road to India. Out and out on the high ground has stretched the great city. The old mill and the queer winding pond went long ago. The Chouteau house, where there were many gatherings both grave and gay of the older people, is the Merchants’ Exchange. Here and there a place is marked by some memento. But when you see the little old map with its Rue this and that, one smiles and contrasts its small levee with the twenty or more miles of water front, kept, too, within bounds, bridged over magnificently. And if its traders are not as picturesque as Indians and voyageurs and trappers in their different attire, they still seem from almost every nation.
Most of the French have gone. There is no exclusive French circle, as in New Orleans. Here and there a family is proud to trace back its ancestry and keep alive the old tongue. But the old houses have disappeared as well. Sometimes one finds one of the second decade, with its gable windows jutting out of the peaked roof, and one waits to see a brown, dried-up, wrinkled face in French coif and gay shoulder shawl peering out, but it is only a dream.
And surely the Germans earned their birthright with the loyalty of those days when the whole country was rent with the throes of civil war. There was a delightful, friendly, well-bred class of planters from the middle Southern States, who had lovely homes in and about the town, and who clung to their traditions, the system of slavery being more to them than a united country. But the patriotism of these adopted citizens, who had learned many wise lessons at a high price, was a wall against which the forces threw themselves to defeat, and again the everlasting truth conquered.
The youth of cities is the childhood of maturer purposes, knowledge, experience. Each brings with it the traditions of race, of surroundings, to outgrow them later on. Does one really sigh for the past, looking at the present? At the towns and cities and the wealth-producing inventions, where the silence of the wilderness reigned a hundred years ago, or broken only by the wild animals that ranged in their depths, and here and there an Indian lodge? And the new race, born of many others, proud, generous, courageous, men of breadth and foresight, who have bridged streams and hewn down mountains, made the solitary gorges familiar pictures to thousands, and have had their wise and earnest opinions moulded into public wisdom and usefulness, mothers who have added sweetness and wholesome nurture and refined daily living, children growing up to transform the beautiful city again, perhaps, though as one walks its splendid streets one wonders if there is any better thing to come, if the genius of man can devise more worthiness.
The new white city may answer it to the countless thousands who will come from all the quarters of the globe.
But the Little Girl and Old St. Louis had their happy day and are garnered among the memories of the past.